Thirty six years ago, on this day, September 25th, 1990,
Miners write letter to Alan Griffiths, Resources Minister
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 354ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the settler colony known as Australia had always been extractivist and relying on export earnings. This used to come from agriculture and sheep. By the 1980s this had turned to minerals exports, coal, iron ore, uranium, and so on.
The specific context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development policy process was about to start. This had been a quid pro quo between the Hawke Labor government for tacit support and preferences from greenie groups ahead of the 1990 federal election. The big end of town and also the miners union was deeply nervous that Ecologically Sustainable Development might mean some constraints on what they wanted to do, permission for projects and jobs available. This was a real fear, given what had happened in 1989 (or the perception of it) around the pulp mill in Tasmania, etc. So here you see the unions trying to remind the resources minister that there’s going to be a fight and they expect him to fight for them.
What I think we can learn from this is the species is gonna respond like this. Or rather, maybe it could have been different, but it wasn’t and here we are.
What happened next ESD revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of the fossil fuel interests. They assumed that the whole process would be them dictating their recommendations to the chair of the individual working groups, but it turned out that they didn’t have any ideas or answers, and the environmentalists ran rings around them. Ultimately, however, the ESD was being kneecapped by late 1991 and when Keating took over from Hawke, the whole thing was basically thrown in the bin.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
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Also on this day:
September 25, 1980 -Reagan turns out to be an ignorant fool. Who knew?
September 25, 1991- European Commission proposes a carbon tax…
September 25, 1995 – Clean Coal. No, seriously.
September 25, 2003 – Bob Carr “strikes greenhouse deal” with European investors